Billy Speare

Forget my nose. It was my manhood that was busted. How did I descend into victimhood, sucker punched by some jerk dressed in a rabbit suit?

Simple. The assault was a curve in the downward spiral I’d been trying to believe was not happening. The kick given Sex’s book sales, thanks to the Times review? Over. Kaput. Preejaculate. That’s the name of that spurt. And forget my agent taking my calls. Once the sales plummeted and it became obvious that the only reviewer in the good ol’ US of A who liked my work was Laughton, both my agent and editor suddenly seemed to be out of the office twenty-four/seven.

So there I was, the morning after, pulled up to the kitchen table, my head back, an ice pack held to the snapped cartilage that was my nose—coffee was brewing. Turkey’d been poured and sipped, five Advil had already been popped—when there was a knock at my door.

“Ah, Christ,” I mumbled, and considered ignoring it, but for some malarkey reason I decided to behave like a good citizen. And you know, I think the pussy in me thought it might be the white rabbit, come to apologize. I set down the ice pack and walked over to the door, which technically was off of the living room, but in this tin can, trying to behave as if the kitchen, dining room, and living room weren’t all jammed into the same rectangle was an exercise in delusional thinking. I cracked open the door. “Yeah?”

“Mr. Speare?”

I eyeballed her. I mean really. I think my right eyeball was the only thing visible. One bloodshot, droopy-lidded eyeball. She was a kid, maybe eighteen, dressed in skintight jeans that barely made it past her bikini line, a midriff stretch blouse the color of wild onions, a pink faux-fur cotton-candy jacket, lots of chains, pierced eyebrow, nose, tongue—Christ, what else?—tattoos (snakes, Celtic symbols, a spiderweb radiating out of her navel), purple lipstick, Cleopatra eyes. She stood in the dirt, one booted foot on my bottom step, Sex in hand.

“Who’s asking?”

“I am,” she answered indignantly, as if that was a sufficient answer.

My eyeball was growing fatigued, so I cracked open the door far enough for both eyeballs to be visible. She made a face, like she’d just swallowed cat puke. “Jesus, what happened to you?”

It took a few seconds for the reason behind her revulsion to register, and I should have known better, but I went ahead and answered. “I got punched by a rabbit.”

She shook her head and stared out toward the river. “I knew you’d be fucked-up.”

“What kind of talk is that?” I opened the door all the way, scratched my ass ’cause I felt like it.

“Are you going to let me in?” She looked at me as if she were sizing up whether to give a bum a buck. “Or what?” She had the bitter countenance of a woman twice her age, someone who’d been through more divorces and selfish men than any one soul had a right to.

I met her disapproving gaze, stayed that way for a good long minute, trying to figure out how to get her off my case, and then I felt something. It was as if the earth had begun a descent into a horrible place. Not hell. It was worse than hell. The rumble started in my chest and then split off, winding its way down into the netherworld of my lower intestines and up into the white hills of my cerebral cortex. I think I was in the throes of what country musicians call “a breaking heart.”

         

She was a junior at Duke, majoring in English lit, and her name was Ariela. Her mom, divorced from Ariela’s father for three years, had moved to Anastasia Island in the scatter-boned aftermath of her marriage. Ariela had stayed in Swainsboro, Georgia, with her dad to finish out her senior year. I’d been to Swainsboro. It’s about as far from Western civilization (read that: ambition) as a town can get. And now she was at Duke. You had to admire a kid with all that moxie, even if the little bitch was a smart-ass with a foul mouth.

And she was breaking my heart, because sometimes the past shows up on your doorstep in the form of an eighteen-year-old punk kid.

Little Ariela van den Berg, admirer of my work and perhaps a child genius, claimed she had hunted me down by making discreet inquiries at every beach bar from Avenue A to Devil’s Elbow. She also claimed to have medical training.

“Wow,” she said as she tossed my book on the couch and removed her cotton-candy jacket, “it’s a good thing I came over. That cauliflower of a nose needs to be set.”

“No. No doctors. I detest them. Especially now.”

She wafted by, waving away my words as if they were shredded bits of early, bad drafts. She went straight to the cabinet above my stove and opened it. “Everyone keeps their liquor above their stoves. Why is that?” She pulled down my very expensive bottle of Patrón. “Hey! Good stuff. There’s nothing worse than cheap tequila.”

“Well, just freaking help yourself,” I said, taking note of the peace sign tattooed on the knobby stob of vertebra number one. For a brief moment, I thought I should pull on my jeans, then decided against it. She was the one who had invited herself in. She could damn well put up with me as I was. I started to take my place at the kitchen table.

“No, no! Don’t sit!” She reached into the sink, pulled out a dirty juice glass, rinsed it, and filled it to the rim with Patrón.

“Before drinking another person’s liquor, it is polite to ask for permission first.” I pulled out the chair and sat grandly. I was a king in my shitcan trailer. The ice pack had begun to melt, and the puddle it created looked like a blister. I wrung it out over the linoleum floor and delicately returned it to my swollen, cracked beak.

“Two summers ago, I interned with the EMS in Swainsboro.” She removed the ice pack and closely inspected my schnoz. “That’s got to be set. I can do it. I don’t blame you about doctors. They creep me out. Here. Drink this.” She shoved the juice glass of tequila at me. I didn’t have any idea where this was going, but I knew if I didn’t drink, it would mean that she had won. I couldn’t let that happen, even though the result of my manliness was that I was about to have a tequila back for my Wild Turkey. Thinking about it now, I can see how some people would say that mixing bourbon and tequila was a recipe for disaster. Or at least a bloody wingdinger of a hang-around.

“Drink,” she said, and I did. “Want some lemon? You got any?”

“Nah, I don’t want no fucking Yuppie lemon.”

“Now who’s got the mouth on them, Mr. Literary Genius?” She pulled out a chair, spun it backward, and straddled it as if she were the new James Dean. She tugged on the silver hoop in her brow, and that made me wince.

“Why do you want me to drink this?”

“Trust me. Just do it.” She leaned back and shot me the kind of look that lawyers do when they’re about to reveal the dollars and cents of their required retainer. “I like your book.”

I sucked down more of the agave juice. “Thank you, ma’am.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Is it the only one of mine you’ve read?”

“Well, yeah!” She rolled her eyes.

I carefully considered the clear fluid. Why can’t people be nice? “Just thought I’d ask.” This kid’s attitude was in severe need of an overhaul. Who the fuck raised her? I tossed back the last of the tequila. I let it settle, sort of like a cherry bomb. I had gas, but I couldn’t let her know, so I tried to let it out real slow, soft like, with no noise. I wasn’t sure how successful I was being, because the liquor was starting to impair my worldview.

She made the cat-puke face again. “Why are you such a mess?”

“I don’t know. Maybe for the same reasons you are.”

“Hey!” She jumped up, slammed her hands on her hips. She was going to make some perfectly fine young man miserable one day. “I am not a mess. And neither is my mother.” She screamed those words right before bursting into tears.

“Oh fucking Christ! What? What now?” Like I needed an eighteen-year-old crying female in my life.

“Nothing!” Her face trembled as she searched for control. “Nothing nothing nothing!” She attacked her tears with tiny fists.

I farted.

That’s all she needed. Her Cleopatra eyes hooded. She was an ancient female, having suckled on the breast of that feminine virtue called Gotcha! She crossed her arms in front of her—not a protective gesture, more like the queenly repose of a superior being. “Case closed.”

I farted again. It just happened. Ariela started laughing. She had a beautiful laugh. It sounded like youth and hope, fine-tuned by sadness. “I’m really sorry,” I said, and then I started laughing. Surprised the hell out of myself. I was laughing. And it made my nose pound.

“Come on,” she said, “I think the tequila has done its job.”

“What? What?”

“Get up and go to the bathroom.”

“Now, see here.”

She executed yet another perfect eye roll. “Not for that! I’m going to set your nose.”

Now there was a sobering idea. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Of course I’m serious.”

I grabbed the bottle of Patrón and took a swig.

“You can look like Eddie Munster the rest of your life. Or”—she flipped back her hair—“you can let me help you.” She talked slowly, as if I were drunk, retarded, and four. Then she turned on her booted little heel and started walking the five steps to the bathroom.

“Bring the bottle with you,” she said on step three.